Eye-opener of the week for me: A Center For Immigration Studies talk I attended in New York City, given by political scientist Hans von Spakovsky. Title: “How noncitizen voting threatens our democracy.”

I therefore took my seat at the von Spakovsky lecture bearing low expectations and a large glass of Cabernet Sauvignon to aid in falling asleep, should my senses be dulled to somnolence by bland neoconnery.

To my pleasant surprise, von Spakovsky’s talk was coherent, engaging, revealing, and thought-provoking. He spoke for about forty-five minutes, with examples, statistics, and some colorful anecdotes.

Bottom line: voter fraud is a real problem, one we don’t pay half enough attention to. Some jottings at random from my notes:

California, encouraged by the Obama administration, gives drivers licenses to illegal aliens. That’s bad enough. Worse is this: When acquiring a license, the applicant is automatically registered to vote, unless he specifically asks not to be. Close to a million illegals have been given licenses since the motor-voter law came in two years ago.

When you get a form from your local County Court asking you to register for jury duty, one of the questions on the form is: “Are you a U.S. citizen?”

(As it happens, my wife got this form just the other day; and, yes, the question is right there.)

In most jurisdictions, including mine, the address lists for these forms to be sent out to are compiled from the voter registration rolls for the district.

So (a) anyone ticking the “No” box to that question is admitting to being on the voter registration rolls improperly: but (b) jury duty being a duty — a chore — not a pleasure, there is strong incentive to tick the “No” box, to get out of jury duty.

Attempts to bring these and related issues to the attention of the Obama Justice Department — issues of voter fraud whose perps could be identified by some easy low-level data mining — were greeted with total lack of interest.

Von Spakovsky published a book about this in 2012, Who’s Counting? co-written with veteran conservative analyst John Fund, which other VDARE.com writers have noticed.

This is supposed to be the age of Big Data, when not a sparrow falls but some government or commercial outlet somewhere can tell you the age, birthplace, color, educational history, marital status, sexual orientation, and purchasing habits of the sparrow. Yet in the matter of voter registration, one of the foundations of our republican institutions, the computer may as well not have been invented.

This is true at the most basic level. A lady known to me moved from her family home in a certain state to live with her husband in a different state. The voter-registration form sent to her family home in the original state continued to show her name. She wrote to the registrar in that state, telling him she was now resident elsewhere, and should be removed from that state’s rolls.

Nothing happened. She wrote again; again, nothing. Some years later, despite her efforts to be a good citizen, she is still a registered voter in two states.

This, von Spakovsky said, is very common.

Another big take-away from his talk: the ruthless, relentless, unblinking efforts by CultMarx bastions like the ACLU to stamp hard on any suggestion for reform. Local politicians and county officials are terrified to do anything about situations like that of my friend. They know that if they do try to clean up the voter rolls, someone from one of these busybody progressive outfits will show up with a battalion of lawyers in tow and camp out in front of the county courthouse, staffed-up and financed — very well-financed — to litigate the matter to death.

The deep ideological purpose here is quite plain: To erase the distinction between citizens and resident aliens, both legal and illegal.

Cultural Marxists detest the nation-state. The citizen-noncitizen distinction is, to them, Jim Crow. Any effort to restrain noncitizen voting is, in the CultMarx mind, the thin end of a wedge whose thick end is separate drinking fountains for noncitizens.

That ideological purpose is itself just the hard core in a cloud of fluffy anti-nationalism that blankets all of Western society nowadays.

Ethnocentric footnote: Von Spakovsky was particularly good on the shameless determination of Eric Holder’s Justice Department to do nothing at all about voter fraud. It’s something he knows about: he and John Fund co-wrote Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department three years ago.

Watching Jeff Sessions speaking in Nogales the day after I attended Von Spakovsky’s lecture, the contrast between the two Attorneys General jumped out at me.

I don’t mean the contrast in political or jurisprudential viewpoints. There’s that, of course; but that’s just intellectual disagreement.

The contrast that struck me was one of deep-ingrained attitudes to the law; and the contrast was, to put it very bluntly, between the Anglo-Saxon attitude — “Anglo-Saxon-Celtic,” if you want to be finicky about it — and … other.

George Orwell, in one of his essays about the English character, said:

The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong.” It is known that the criminal law is harsh and full of anomalies and that litigation is so expensive as always to favour the rich against the poor: but there is a general feeling that the law, such as it is, will be scrupulously administered … An Englishman does not believe in his bones, as a Spanish or Italian peasant does, that the law is simply a racket.

Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for constitutionalism and legality, the belief in “the law” as something above the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid, of course, but at any rate incorruptible.

It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not. Remarks like “They can’t run me in; I haven’t done anything wrong,” or “They can’t do that; it’s against the law,” are part of the atmosphere of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly as anyone else. One sees it in … letters to the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that is a “miscarriage of British justice.” Everyone believes in his heart that the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered. The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted it in theory.

The first of those essays was written just after WW2 ended and the Brits were feeling exceptionally pleased with themselves; the second was written earlier, during the Blitz.

Still, even discounting for the nationalist buzz that Orwell and his countrymen were enjoying at the time, there is definitely something in what he wrote.

ORDER IT NOW

Jeff Sessions represents that older Anglo-Saxon sensibility. Eric Holder represented something quite fundamentally different, something close to what Orwell’s “Spanish or Italian peasant” believed: that the law is simply a racket, a way for the powerful to buttress and preserve their power, and to practice spite against categories of people they dislike — in Eric Holder‘s case, towards non-elite white Americans.

I’m sure the contrast is a real one, but I can’t explain why it is so. Eric Holder was born and raised in the U.S.A., which is an Anglo-Saxon creation. His family came from Barbados, which was a British colony for three centuries. On those bases, I guess we can rule out nurture. That leaves us with nature; or at best, nature qualified with lifetime immersion in the postmodern intellectual counterculture.

I’d like to think — there’s no way to know, of course, but I do think and believe — that Jeff Sessions, confronted with the kind of evidence of massive voter fraud that Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund sent to the Justice Department, would have acted vigorously to put a stop to it, without any thought for the political consequences for the faction he supported.

These are our laws — our laws, the people’s laws, enacted by the people’s representatives according to longstanding customary procedures. They are being mocked, violated, ignored. That has to stop.

That’s the sum total of the thoughts that would have gone through the head of a patriotic conservative such as I believe Jeff Sessions to be.

It’s the law; it needs to be impartially administered; its judgments need to be firmly enforced.

That’s it. That’s the mindset Orwell identified. You don’t find it much outside the Anglosphere. If we lose it, we’re no better than Syria or Russia, China or Zimbabwe. In those places the law is just a tool with which the powerful can crush the skulls of their enemies … which was more or less Eric Holder’s position.

It was shocking and horrible, during the Obama Administration, to see that latter mentality abroad in the U.S.A.

I wish long life and good health to our Attorney General, and many more years of service to our republic.

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The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920.

There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

Back in 1400 England the Circuit Judges - and notice the word, had a major job- that of Discovery,. It was not then as it has now been perverted to be about the facts of the case.
It was about discovering the practices and customs of the people of the area: what was generally considered the decent thing to do, and were those norms violated.

The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh.

"I know a number of intelligent Asians, and even Continentals, who find the concept of common law perplexing."

Initially, perhaps. But given their intellectual horsepower, it is a concept they clearly are able to comprehend and apply as citizens of our nation.

"The notion of lex rex versus rex lex is actually kind of unique."

What is other than unique are people who able to comprehend the concept of the social contract, which Rutherford laid the groundwork for. And his position on the nature of church-state relations, along with his anti-toleration stance on religion, fell on deaf ears when Locke wrote his treatise. Assuredly people from different walks of life are more than capable of applying those principles in their daily lives as Americans, regardless if they are non-English.

You, along with your guy pal Vox Day, have this notion that non-English people are other than capable of understanding the Rights of Englishmen. He says, "No other people shared the Englishman's view of the law. The Northern Europeans didn't grasp the concept of its theoretical limits. The Southern Europeans saw it as a racket to benefit the powerful and the well-connected. The Jews and Irish saw it as a game to be exploited for the benefit of their tribes."

Best wishes making this argument to today's white Americans, that they and their ancestors are other than American, other than able to handle these awesome civic responsibilities. Indeed, white people will wake up and string up those on the Alt Right who tout this ideological stance that wreaks of solipsism, virtue signaling, and elitism.

The contrast that struck me was one of deep-ingrained attitudes to the law; and the contrast was, to put it very bluntly, between the Anglo-Saxon attitude — “Anglo-Saxon-Celtic,” if you want to be finicky about it — and … other.

This sounds to me like Uncertainty Avoidance, defined as: ‘Rule-embracing’ –Do people only feel comfortable with clear rules in place?

There’s an Uncertainty Avoidance map at Those Who Can See (scroll waaaay down) showing that the Scandinavian and Germanic nations tend to embrace rules somewhat more than Anglosphere ones, who in turn embrace rules more than the rest of Europe, including Celtic Ireland.

Derbyman has gratuitously included the Celts in the category of the jurisprudence respecters while deliberately excluding the highly disciplined Germans from the honor. Of course, it could not be his partiality to consanguineal ties, which elevates the Celts to the higher order, for he has also neglected any mention of the Middle Kingdom, his kith and kin from marital woe!

An old English saying is that, They hang the man who steals a goose from the common and they Knight the man who steals the common. You’d think the message would have sunk in after all this time but I agree that to a large extent it hasn’t.

Holder, being dark skinned and coming from a West Indian culture would know better than any true Englishman that the law is only applied to the common folk while those in high places live by a different set of “laws”.

The point of that particular saying is that speaker is pointing out the injustice of it. The Englishman believes this is wrong whereas some other cultures believe this just is. They may even believe it to be the natural order. The strong English inclination toward egalitarianism (for good or ill) makes it impossible for them to agree that it is natural, and therefore somewhat good or at least orderly to have those in power abuse it simply because they can.

It's not a love of the law, because both England and America have been enraptured with outlaws from Robin Hood to Jesse James. Those men were seen to be fighting top-down domination and injustice, and were thus good.

It is our darned egalitarian nature which seeks to hold all men under the same law. This served us well for hundreds of years; we shall see if our egalitarian nature continues to serve us well or if it is our ultimate undoing.

"They hang the man who steals a goose from the common": stealing a commoner's goose is a serious crime. How would you feel if your stint on the common was to graze three geese and some thief stole one of them?

I’m sure the contrast is a real one, but I can’t explain why it is so. Eric Holder was born and raised in the U.S.A., which is an Anglo-Saxon creation. His family came from Barbados, which was a British colony for three centuries. On those bases, I guess we can rule out nurture. That leaves us with nature; or at best, nature qualified with lifetime immersion in the postmodern intellectual counterculture.

I think nature plays a role. Nicholas Wade has theorized that Western Europeans actually evolved away from the tribalism seen in Africa and the Middle East, for example. To the tribalist, political power means little more than the opportunity to reward yourself and your buddies at the expense of your enemies — and it is assumed that your enemy will do exactly the same thing if/when he’s in power. This pattern seems to be played out all too often when African-Americans gain control of city governments.

Nepotism has diminishing marginal utility, and is generally toxic to a society. This is also why I find nativists to be silly, because they often do not wish to apply a single law either, and I've seen the ultimate result of their arguments basically fall into pure advocacy of self-destructive corruption attitudes.

The problem is laws can be subverted which is often how the rich get away with what the poor can not afford a good law subverter. The jews marxists and law subverters extraordinair used our laws to destroy our nations. people like us and sessions let it happen because it was legal and we respected the law more than ourselves, capitalism another jew talent, we liked what we thought of as its impartiality justice and how that might benefit us like the law again it was subverted and turned on us because we made an idol of it, and would not speak against it as it destroyed us. Our religion too worked well for us and it too was subverted into a secular leftism religion of trannys on the cross by guess who jews. no need to hate them they do what they think they must to survive, its simply time to see them for what they are and finally completely expell them never to return

Perhaps the “english” attitude is more a result of how long the Brits have been slaves of their ruling class – and how long they have been indoctrinated that being “brit-slaves” is still preferable to others.

Steven Pinker’s new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, is a propaganda windfall for the leaders and supporters of the U.S. imperial state, currently engaged in multiple wars, with over 800 military bases across the globe, asserting and using the right to kill untried “terrorists” any place on earth and still operating a torture gulag abroad and a record-breaking and abusive prison system at home….

….. Pinker deals with Chalmers Johnson and his ilk by the application of the “preferential method” of research, which is his modus operandi across the board. That is, he never mentions Johnson and never addresses his facts and arguments. He also never cites Andrew Bacevich, another outstanding and experienced analyst who gives a lot of weight to the power of the military-industrial complex (MIC), its costliness, blowback consequences, and its threat to a democratic order.

There is a string of other quality analysts on militarism, old and new, who Pinker avoids, including Gordon Adams, Richard Kaufman, Nick Turse, Thomas Carroll, William Blum, Robert Higgs, Ivan Eland, Winslow Wheeler, Miriam Pemberton, Frida Berrigan, William Hartung, and Catherine Lutz. None of these appear in Pinker’s fairly detailed index….

An old English saying is that, They hang the man who steals a goose from the common and they Knight the man who steals the common. You'd think the message would have sunk in after all this time but I agree that to a large extent it hasn't.

Holder, being dark skinned and coming from a West Indian culture would know better than any true Englishman that the law is only applied to the common folk while those in high places live by a different set of "laws".

The point of that particular saying is that speaker is pointing out the injustice of it. The Englishman believes this is wrong whereas some other cultures believe this just is. They may even believe it to be the natural order. The strong English inclination toward egalitarianism (for good or ill) makes it impossible for them to agree that it is natural, and therefore somewhat good or at least orderly to have those in power abuse it simply because they can.

It’s not a love of the law, because both England and America have been enraptured with outlaws from Robin Hood to Jesse James. Those men were seen to be fighting top-down domination and injustice, and were thus good.

It is our darned egalitarian nature which seeks to hold all men under the same law. This served us well for hundreds of years; we shall see if our egalitarian nature continues to serve us well or if it is our ultimate undoing.

If we were talking instead about the constitutional rights of Muslim Americans, I’m sure JD would be the first to argue that “the constitution is not a suicide pact” and that we can’t let legal niceties stop the authorities from subjecting all Muslims, regardless of citizenship, to intrusive surveillance.

If common respect for rule of law is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon culture, that could perhaps be attributed to historical developments that gave a majority of Englishmen, regardless of social class, the same rights before the law. A unique and fortuitous development, to be sure, but in the end it’s still about one law for me, another for thee. You have to be part of the privileged group, whether defined by class or race or tribe. Same for Englishmen and their descendants as for everyone.

So what you're actually saying is, the Constitution really is a suicide pact.

We avoid that quandary by not letting them in. "The rights of Englishmen" has no meaning in the context of free-floating, universalist conceptions. The English (and the Anglo-Americans) took the right of rule from a king and gave it to themselves to be passed to their descendants.

Perhaps the "english" attitude is more a result of how long the Brits have been slaves of their ruling class - and how long they have been indoctrinated that being "brit-slaves" is still preferable to others.

A recent example of the application of "rule of law".

Former IMF chief gets four years in jail for embezzlement in Spain
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/feb/23/former-imf-chief-gets-four-years-jail-after-corruption-trial-in-spain

If we were talking instead about the constitutional rights of Muslim Americans, I'm sure JD would be the first to argue that "the constitution is not a suicide pact" and that we can't let legal niceties stop the authorities from subjecting all Muslims, regardless of citizenship, to intrusive surveillance.

If common respect for rule of law is characteristic of Anglo-Saxon culture, that could perhaps be attributed to historical developments that gave a majority of Englishmen, regardless of social class, the same rights before the law. A unique and fortuitous development, to be sure, but in the end it's still about one law for me, another for thee. You have to be part of the privileged group, whether defined by class or race or tribe. Same for Englishmen and their descendants as for everyone.

So what you’re actually saying is, the Constitution really is a suicide pact.

We avoid that quandary by not letting them in. “The rights of Englishmen” has no meaning in the context of free-floating, universalist conceptions. The English (and the Anglo-Americans) took the right of rule from a king and gave it to themselves to be passed to their descendants.

My point is simply that nobody, not even the English, believes in rule of law in the way JD is implying, i.e. as applying the same law to everyone in the same territory, without regard to persons. We simply find that in some cultures, like the Latin, the law is understood as applying only to the lower classes, with the wealthy living under a different set of rules. With the English, the law applied to all members of the majority ethnic group, while those outside that group, even living in the same territory, were not given the same treatment (e.g. black slaves). I know JD has been on record here before as saying that Muslims who live in the US, under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution, should not be afforded the presumption of innocence and other such rights listed in the Constitution, so he himself has denied the rule of law where it politically suits him.

This isn't necessarily to deny your other points. I imagine you have something in mind along the lines of the need for ethnic cohesion to foster high social trust which in turn can support faith in rule of law.

An old English saying is that, They hang the man who steals a goose from the common and they Knight the man who steals the common. You'd think the message would have sunk in after all this time but I agree that to a large extent it hasn't.

Holder, being dark skinned and coming from a West Indian culture would know better than any true Englishman that the law is only applied to the common folk while those in high places live by a different set of "laws".

“They hang the man who steals a goose from the common”: stealing a commoner’s goose is a serious crime. How would you feel if your stint on the common was to graze three geese and some thief stole one of them?

Why are you suggesting that I wrote that it was OK to steal the goose from the commons? Surely my point was that there are two sets of laws, one for the plebs and another for the elites. How could that not be clear to you?

I know a number of intelligent Asians, and even Continentals, who find the concept of common law perplexing. The notion of lex rex versus rex lex is actually kind of unique.

The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920.

There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

Back in 1400 England the Circuit Judges – and notice the word, had a major job- that of Discovery,. It was not then as it has now been perverted to be about the facts of the case.
It was about discovering the practices and customs of the people of the area: what was generally considered the decent thing to do, and were those norms violated.

The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh.

Are you able to directly trace your ancestors on your mother's and father's side to the English? If not, you are not an American.

"The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920. There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers."

I'm sure you have the requisite paper trail to demonstrate clearly how these Jews were involved in creating thousands of these laws. Could you even give a preview of what pieces of legislation that, from your perspective, were instrumental in the destruction of common law, rather than hyperventilate?

"The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh."

The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920. There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

You're not going to find 5,000 criminal offenses in the U.S. Code, statutory codification antedated widespread entry into the legal profession by Jews, and 95% of the U.S. Congress is gentile. Other than that, your remarks are accurate.

In those places the law is just a tool with which the powerful can crush the skulls of their enemies …

Not exactly. The Chinese view of law is still heavily colored by Legalism, a kind of realpolitik from the 3rd century BCE. This view holds that laws are instruments of the state, parts that make up a greater societal machine. Societies that are constructed from the best and most finely calibrated laws then result the most powerful state. The intent of Legalism is therefore to maintain sovereignty and advance state power, not to enshrine rights, produce liberty, happiness, or the “common good”. Those things are considered necessary only to the extent of achieving the primary goals.

In other words Chinese law is not held as sacred as English law before it is considered an utilitarian tool that is intentionally anti-humanist, and can be changed whenever necessary. Crushing the skulls of the ruler’s enemies is only one part of it.

Fa-jia/legalist thinking has its uses but even early Chinese thinkers realized that it wasn't really a lasting solution. These days, I would say that it results in an overtly huge state which chokes economic growth as surely as any welfare state. I mean, when you have a spy agency to watch a spy agency which watches a spy agency...

There's a reason, among others, that Confucianism became the most popular school. If you can't trust people to be even mildly virtuous, its almost doesn't seem worth it to try to make a government for them.

By and large, I'll say that Chinese thinking did indeed encourage the notion to produce happiness and common good - it just so happened that those were defined in terms of social harmony and familial virtue. The smallest unit was the nuclear family, not the individual, so that is to take into consideration.

But I mean, look at the works of Mencius. Technically, you could even make SJW arguments from them - in one part, he argues of criminals "...Even in years of prosperity their lives are bitter while in years of dearth they are unable to escape starvation. Under these circumstances they only try to save themselves from death, fearful that they will not succeed. How could they spare the time for the practice of rites and lawfulness?"

As a resident of Florida where convicted felons are not allowed to vote I am concerned that county registrars can only determine if the voter was convicted of a felony in Florida, i.e, they do not have available to them what the policeman writing a traffic ticket outside has available to him. Access to the National Criminal Information Center. Since state Attorneys General, local prosecutors, sheriffs even judges are elected officials preventing America’s 20 million convicted felons from voting seems beyond obvious.

I know a number of intelligent Asians, and even Continentals, who find the concept of common law perplexing. The notion of lex rex versus rex lex is actually kind of unique.

“I know a number of intelligent Asians, and even Continentals, who find the concept of common law perplexing.”

Initially, perhaps. But given their intellectual horsepower, it is a concept they clearly are able to comprehend and apply as citizens of our nation.

“The notion of lex rex versus rex lex is actually kind of unique.”

What is other than unique are people who able to comprehend the concept of the social contract, which Rutherford laid the groundwork for. And his position on the nature of church-state relations, along with his anti-toleration stance on religion, fell on deaf ears when Locke wrote his treatise. Assuredly people from different walks of life are more than capable of applying those principles in their daily lives as Americans, regardless if they are non-English.

You, along with your guy pal Vox Day, have this notion that non-English people are other than capable of understanding the Rights of Englishmen. He says, “No other people shared the Englishman’s view of the law. The Northern Europeans didn’t grasp the concept of its theoretical limits. The Southern Europeans saw it as a racket to benefit the powerful and the well-connected. The Jews and Irish saw it as a game to be exploited for the benefit of their tribes.”

Best wishes making this argument to today’s white Americans, that they and their ancestors are other than American, other than able to handle these awesome civic responsibilities. Indeed, white people will wake up and string up those on the Alt Right who tout this ideological stance that wreaks of solipsism, virtue signaling, and elitism.

The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920.

There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

Back in 1400 England the Circuit Judges - and notice the word, had a major job- that of Discovery,. It was not then as it has now been perverted to be about the facts of the case.
It was about discovering the practices and customs of the people of the area: what was generally considered the decent thing to do, and were those norms violated.

The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh.

Are you able to directly trace your ancestors on your mother’s and father’s side to the English? If not, you are not an American.

“The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920. There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.”

I’m sure you have the requisite paper trail to demonstrate clearly how these Jews were involved in creating thousands of these laws. Could you even give a preview of what pieces of legislation that, from your perspective, were instrumental in the destruction of common law, rather than hyperventilate?

“The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh.”

"They hang the man who steals a goose from the common": stealing a commoner's goose is a serious crime. How would you feel if your stint on the common was to graze three geese and some thief stole one of them?

Why are you suggesting that I wrote that it was OK to steal the goose from the commons? Surely my point was that there are two sets of laws, one for the plebs and another for the elites. How could that not be clear to you?

The masses still more or less assume that “against the law” is a synonym for “wrong.”

One of the most harmful effects of our heavy and invasive tax laws is that they gradually accustom the American (WASP) mind to the idea that law has nothing whatsoever to do with our intuitions of right and wrong. Much of Western law has always had an indirect connection with right and wrong — but before the 20th century, all but a few gadflies maintained that any law worthy of respect could ultimately be traced back to a foundation in the Ten Commandments or Kantian moral axioms. It was only with the victory of Legal Realism over Natural Law Theory in the 1920s-30s that any connection with morality became irrelevant, among academics and academically oriented judges. This is what the modern state wants, so that it will be free to declare the law without reference to any standard of validity beyond its own say-so. Elaborate tax laws advance this goal because they have no reason for existing other than the state’s naked desire to extract more and more of our earnings.

What is really shocking is that Holder is a great cricketing name in Barbados. Just consider Jason, Vanburn, Roland and Alfonso. Barbados is a rather special part of the West Indies and I am sure the expression “it’s just not cricket” would have been as familiar to his parents as to the son of a Staffordshire miner. That is respect for the law but also the spirit of the law.

I do hope that you're on the mend dear Wiz, you would surely be missed here, especially for all of the amusement value that you provide.

The expression "It's just not cricket" has more to do with fair-play and fairness than it does to the legal system and the laws of the land. I would expect you of all people to know that "the law" has a scant connection to fairness of any sort.

Well you can be quite sharp in the morning! But there's still that touch of tendentious inattention to the precise words othrrs have chosen to use use. (although UR is no exception when I concede that "imprecise words others have happened to use" would often be apt). I was there - unless you think "spirit of the laws" fails to flag fairness.

The only one of all those Holders I've met is in fact Eric, over 20 years ago. And he was definitely one of the good guys then to the naive understanding. I wonder if mention of Barbados would have been a prompt for me to ask if he had any affinity for cricket. Of course he would have been very smooth and I suspect that Caribbeans are anyway pretty happy for people to be aware that they aren't standard African-Americans.

You have by greatest indirection put me on to a memory I can now date to the early 80s when I met Dr Rudi Webster and his wife Lyndi at a party in Melbourne where I remember there were fireworks. A tall Barbadian fast-medium bowler of great charm who had played for Scotland I now see. Tbat White Australia Policy collapsed quivkly! He had been in Melbourne since 1968 before returning to Barbados in 1986 after years as first Carlton then Richmonf FC sports psychologist. I recall him joking about the impact on an 18 year old from Barbados travelling for the first time and arriving in Edinburgh of all places to study medicine and psychiatry. You might find his address at Wes Loft's funeral on the CarltonFC site and his Wiki entry of some mild interest. His life in the non US Anglosphere seems to highlight the toxicity of race relations in the US.

While searching for the title to the book he has apparently written on sports psychology with a view to passing it on to Steve Sailer I came across a 2010 article he had written for the (Barbados) Nation on cheating titled "A Moral Code Would Help" (remind me to recite the Ten Commandments before I complete my next tax return).
http://www.pressreader.com/barbados/daily-nation-barbados/20100922/281994668826166

We're almost back to "it just isn't cricket". Now I just have to find that book title for Steve...

The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920.

There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

Back in 1400 England the Circuit Judges - and notice the word, had a major job- that of Discovery,. It was not then as it has now been perverted to be about the facts of the case.
It was about discovering the practices and customs of the people of the area: what was generally considered the decent thing to do, and were those norms violated.

The norms differed between the English and the lying sheep-shagging thieving Welsh.

The concept of common law in the US took a severe beating from the influx of two million Eastern European Jews from 1880-1920. There are now five thousand Federal Offences because of these fuckers.

You’re not going to find 5,000 criminal offenses in the U.S. Code, statutory codification antedated widespread entry into the legal profession by Jews, and 95% of the U.S. Congress is gentile. Other than that, your remarks are accurate.

Having spent my youth in England, I can confirm what Orwell and Derbyshire say, that one grows up in England regarding the law as immutable, no matter how nonsensical it is.

Perhaps this is part of growing up, because as one gets older one realizes that everything is changing all the time.

I know I was shocked many years ago in Bermuda (probably in the late 80′s) because I was an hour late for work after a leisurely breakfast due to the clocks having been moved forward in the spring. It was not that I didn’t know that the clocks moved forwards in the spring, but I knew that in Bermuda the clocks moved forward on the last Sunday in April, and never imagined that something of that nature could be altered from one year to another, especially as Bermuda was a very conservative place that prided itself on adherence to traditions.

Now, having lived in the US for many years, I am well aware that one of the main purposes of politics is to elect people who might change the laws in one’s favor, or at least be amenable to being rewarded to do so.

So what you're actually saying is, the Constitution really is a suicide pact.

We avoid that quandary by not letting them in. "The rights of Englishmen" has no meaning in the context of free-floating, universalist conceptions. The English (and the Anglo-Americans) took the right of rule from a king and gave it to themselves to be passed to their descendants.

In other words, rights are property or they are nothing.

My point is simply that nobody, not even the English, believes in rule of law in the way JD is implying, i.e. as applying the same law to everyone in the same territory, without regard to persons. We simply find that in some cultures, like the Latin, the law is understood as applying only to the lower classes, with the wealthy living under a different set of rules. With the English, the law applied to all members of the majority ethnic group, while those outside that group, even living in the same territory, were not given the same treatment (e.g. black slaves). I know JD has been on record here before as saying that Muslims who live in the US, under the jurisdiction of the US Constitution, should not be afforded the presumption of innocence and other such rights listed in the Constitution, so he himself has denied the rule of law where it politically suits him.

This isn’t necessarily to deny your other points. I imagine you have something in mind along the lines of the need for ethnic cohesion to foster high social trust which in turn can support faith in rule of law.

What is really shocking is that Holder is a great cricketing name in Barbados. Just consider Jason, Vanburn, Roland and Alfonso. Barbados is a rather special part of the West Indies and I am sure the expression "it's just not cricket" would have been as familiar to his parents as to the son of a Staffordshire miner. That is respect for the law but also the spirit of the law.

I do hope that you’re on the mend dear Wiz, you would surely be missed here, especially for all of the amusement value that you provide.

The expression “It’s just not cricket” has more to do with fair-play and fairness than it does to the legal system and the laws of the land. I would expect you of all people to know that “the law” has a scant connection to fairness of any sort.

ALSO...If you surmise that "justice according to law" is burnt into my still phasic neuronal clusters then you are right. I am not one of the frothing fanatics against the "judicial activists" but I find it easy to hold them in contempt as they presume that their little slice of quotidian fashionable wisdom needs to be promoted by judicial decision when legislation and a fortiori constitutional amendment are too difficult. And yet, and yet. I am pleased as a matter of policy that the activist 1990ish Mason High Court (reminder to those confined in the centre of the world that it is Oz's SCOTUS equivalent) found an implied right to free political speech in our constitution, despite there being no Bill of Rights, and stopped a Labor government supported corfuptly by union money from severely cutting parties access to funding sources. (Maybe it was going to extend to stopping e.g. mining companies protesting special mining taxes - I forget the detail).

Then there was the High Court's abolition of the legal basis on which Australia had been settled by Europeans after 1788 with the Crown, as effectively the chief feudal lord owning all the land and making Crown grants of freehold, or long leases, often conditional (e.g. a certain amount of prompt environmental destruction by axe and ungulate might be required). John Batman tried making agreements with the local Aborigines around Melbourne in the 1830s but they were null and void - officially because the basis of the law had already been established (and remained so for about 160 years) and that was that Australia was terra nullius meaning, though ignorant journalists believe it connoted absence of people, "no one's land". In other words there was no recognisable land law, not even what the Palestinian jaffa farmers had under the Turks. Their nomafic habits and absence of fences (who needs a fence when you've got a spear and boimerang?) just didn't fit with English law. Well meaning judges, mostly with an Irish Catholic background but persuaded by exceedingly rich Jewish counsel, overturned all that and a lot of good it has done the poor Abos (the minority that are affected since no existing freeholds are touched). It does of course provide activists with a chance to blackmail mining companies and extort a lot of money which is usually used to further the destruction through alcohol, idleness and domestic and child abuse, of northern Australian Aboriginal communities which shouldn't exist. So harm is done to Aborigines at great cost to the economy and delays in major projects (the latest massive Indian miñing venture is facing activists funded by an American charity.

So much foe enlightwned thinking and humane intentions. My best friend (actually at that precise stage my only friend) on the Court at the time dissented and I would like to think I wouldn't have found some extremely ingenious way to concur with the majority. Sed quaere.

My hero amongst Australian judiciary once said dneeringly of a case where the Victorian Supreme Court had contrived to find a meaning in a very badly drafted will "and they thought they were doing justice!The real injustice is that the will was made by an 86 year old mam"!

Law serves the interests of the elite. What he's so excited about is the British class system being internalized and tolerated by their lower orders, or part of them anyway. All this talk about 'respecting law' is highfalutin bullshit. Thank god for the Pikeys.

I’m sure the contrast is a real one, but I can’t explain why it is so. Eric Holder was born and raised in the U.S.A., which is an Anglo-Saxon creation. His family came from Barbados, which was a British colony for three centuries. On those bases, I guess we can rule out nurture. That leaves us with nature; or at best, nature qualified with lifetime immersion in the postmodern intellectual counterculture.

I think nature plays a role. Nicholas Wade has theorized that Western Europeans actually evolved away from the tribalism seen in Africa and the Middle East, for example. To the tribalist, political power means little more than the opportunity to reward yourself and your buddies at the expense of your enemies -- and it is assumed that your enemy will do exactly the same thing if/when he's in power. This pattern seems to be played out all too often when African-Americans gain control of city governments.

Nepotism has diminishing marginal utility, and is generally toxic to a society. This is also why I find nativists to be silly, because they often do not wish to apply a single law either, and I’ve seen the ultimate result of their arguments basically fall into pure advocacy of self-destructive corruption attitudes.

In those places the law is just a tool with which the powerful can crush the skulls of their enemies …

Not exactly. The Chinese view of law is still heavily colored by Legalism, a kind of realpolitik from the 3rd century BCE. This view holds that laws are instruments of the state, parts that make up a greater societal machine. Societies that are constructed from the best and most finely calibrated laws then result the most powerful state. The intent of Legalism is therefore to maintain sovereignty and advance state power, not to enshrine rights, produce liberty, happiness, or the "common good". Those things are considered necessary only to the extent of achieving the primary goals.

In other words Chinese law is not held as sacred as English law before it is considered an utilitarian tool that is intentionally anti-humanist, and can be changed whenever necessary. Crushing the skulls of the ruler's enemies is only one part of it.

Fa-jia/legalist thinking has its uses but even early Chinese thinkers realized that it wasn’t really a lasting solution. These days, I would say that it results in an overtly huge state which chokes economic growth as surely as any welfare state. I mean, when you have a spy agency to watch a spy agency which watches a spy agency…

There’s a reason, among others, that Confucianism became the most popular school. If you can’t trust people to be even mildly virtuous, its almost doesn’t seem worth it to try to make a government for them.

By and large, I’ll say that Chinese thinking did indeed encourage the notion to produce happiness and common good – it just so happened that those were defined in terms of social harmony and familial virtue. The smallest unit was the nuclear family, not the individual, so that is to take into consideration.

But I mean, look at the works of Mencius. Technically, you could even make SJW arguments from them – in one part, he argues of criminals “…Even in years of prosperity their lives are bitter while in years of dearth they are unable to escape starvation. Under these circumstances they only try to save themselves from death, fearful that they will not succeed. How could they spare the time for the practice of rites and lawfulness?”

What is really shocking is that Holder is a great cricketing name in Barbados. Just consider Jason, Vanburn, Roland and Alfonso. Barbados is a rather special part of the West Indies and I am sure the expression "it's just not cricket" would have been as familiar to his parents as to the son of a Staffordshire miner. That is respect for the law but also the spirit of the law.

Well you can be quite sharp in the morning! But there’s still that touch of tendentious inattention to the precise words othrrs have chosen to use use. (although UR is no exception when I concede that “imprecise words others have happened to use” would often be apt). I was there – unless you think “spirit of the laws” fails to flag fairness.

The only one of all those Holders I’ve met is in fact Eric, over 20 years ago. And he was definitely one of the good guys then to the naive understanding. I wonder if mention of Barbados would have been a prompt for me to ask if he had any affinity for cricket. Of course he would have been very smooth and I suspect that Caribbeans are anyway pretty happy for people to be aware that they aren’t standard African-Americans.

You have by greatest indirection put me on to a memory I can now date to the early 80s when I met Dr Rudi Webster and his wife Lyndi at a party in Melbourne where I remember there were fireworks. A tall Barbadian fast-medium bowler of great charm who had played for Scotland I now see. Tbat White Australia Policy collapsed quivkly! He had been in Melbourne since 1968 before returning to Barbados in 1986 after years as first Carlton then Richmonf FC sports psychologist. I recall him joking about the impact on an 18 year old from Barbados travelling for the first time and arriving in Edinburgh of all places to study medicine and psychiatry. You might find his address at Wes Loft’s funeral on the CarltonFC site and his Wiki entry of some mild interest. His life in the non US Anglosphere seems to highlight the toxicity of race relations in the US.

While searching for the title to the book he has apparently written on sports psychology with a view to passing it on to Steve Sailer I came across a 2010 article he had written for the (Barbados) Nation on cheating titled “A Moral Code Would Help” (remind me to recite the Ten Commandments before I complete my next tax return).

I do hope that you're on the mend dear Wiz, you would surely be missed here, especially for all of the amusement value that you provide.

The expression "It's just not cricket" has more to do with fair-play and fairness than it does to the legal system and the laws of the land. I would expect you of all people to know that "the law" has a scant connection to fairness of any sort.

But, more than its predecessors, the Obama administration has used prosecutorial discretion on some of the day’s most divisive issues, inviting criticism from his opponents on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Winkler said.

He cited the DOMA stance and the administration’s decision to halt deportations of many illegal immigrants, among other cases.

“This administration has gotten into hot water because it has used prosecutorial discretion in high profile, controversial areas,” Winker said.

What's wrong with the notion of a law equally and fairly applied? Seems fair.

Law serves the interests of the elite. What he’s so excited about is the British class system being internalized and tolerated by their lower orders, or part of them anyway. All this talk about ‘respecting law’ is highfalutin bullshit. Thank god for the Pikeys.

My first Australian ancestor, an irish convict, might as well hsve been a Pikey. He produced a large number of descendants who had every reason to be greatful that contracts and property were relianly protected by law. The view you express is very superficial. Clearly you have never done a ckurse in legal history or studied Roman Law either for comlarative purposes or to explain aspexts carried into the law ofcommon law coubtries. Obviously more powerful people are more likely to have an influence on what the rules of law are than less powerful people but otherwise your implication that the lsw overwhelming serves a small elite to the detriment of most people total canting bullshit and not worthy os someone of your obvious intelligence.

There are, let it be noted, many aspects and divisions of the law. The feudal lord hsd much less need of the protection of the criminal law, apart from his steward cheating him beyond the accepted custom than the mass of commoners. And that is of course still true mutatis mutandis. Contract and property law have secured the rise of the non elites from 1500 to date. Bankruptcy law wasn't designed to enable wastrel heirs to clear their debts before Daddy or Uncle died and they inherited the grat family estate. Intellectual Property ĺaw had many faults and its outrageous life plus 90 years Copyright in the US is what it is because of Disney - but Disney did not achieve it for some elite class. The particulars matter if you want to get these things right.

BTW Rudi Webster, the Barbadian cricketer/psychiatrist/sports psychologist I referred to above says many wise things in the article A Moral Compass Would Help. He cites experiments e.g. where people with a chance to vheat behaved more morally after being asked to write down the Ten Commandments beforehand - even if they could only remember a couple of them. JD has oversimplified but I think you have almost advocated the kind of nihilism which is probably both rational and natural in Mafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta contested parts of Italy.

Must say that I think it would be most unusual for any non American of Western background to consider that US law was ever anything other than a “racket “.
Of course many Americans would agree
Admit to being rather surprised that Derb ever held a view that the US legal system was to be trusted with or without US citizenship .
Most ” Old White Commonwealth ” types of my experience may have many good things to say about the US but the US legal system ( and health system ) never get a mention in such conversations

Admit to being rather surprised that Derb ever held a view that the US legal system was to be trusted with or without US citizenship .
Most ” Old White Commonwealth ” types of my experience may have many good things to say about the US but the US legal system ( and health system ) never get a mention in such conversations

The U.S. legal system is the worst that has ever been put into effect ... except for all those other legal systems that have been put into effect from time to time. (Apologies to Churchill.)

Must say that I think it would be most unusual for any non American of Western background to consider that US law was ever anything other than a "racket ".
Of course many Americans would agree
Admit to being rather surprised that Derb ever held a view that the US legal system was to be trusted with or without US citizenship .
Most " Old White Commonwealth " types of my experience may have many good things to say about the US but the US legal system ( and health system ) never get a mention in such conversations

Admit to being rather surprised that Derb ever held a view that the US legal system was to be trusted with or without US citizenship .
Most ” Old White Commonwealth ” types of my experience may have many good things to say about the US but the US legal system ( and health system ) never get a mention in such conversations

The U.S. legal system is the worst that has ever been put into effect … except for all those other legal systems that have been put into effect from time to time. (Apologies to Churchill.)

I do hope that you're on the mend dear Wiz, you would surely be missed here, especially for all of the amusement value that you provide.

The expression "It's just not cricket" has more to do with fair-play and fairness than it does to the legal system and the laws of the land. I would expect you of all people to know that "the law" has a scant connection to fairness of any sort.

ALSO…If you surmise that “justice according to law” is burnt into my still phasic neuronal clusters then you are right. I am not one of the frothing fanatics against the “judicial activists” but I find it easy to hold them in contempt as they presume that their little slice of quotidian fashionable wisdom needs to be promoted by judicial decision when legislation and a fortiori constitutional amendment are too difficult. And yet, and yet. I am pleased as a matter of policy that the activist 1990ish Mason High Court
(reminder to those confined in the centre of the world that it is Oz’s SCOTUS equivalent) found an implied right to free political speech in our constitution, despite there being no Bill of Rights, and stopped a Labor government supported corfuptly by union money from severely cutting parties access to funding sources. (Maybe it was going to extend to stopping e.g. mining companies protesting special mining taxes – I forget the detail).

Then there was the High Court’s abolition of the legal basis on which Australia had been settled by Europeans after 1788 with the Crown, as effectively the chief feudal lord owning all the land and making Crown grants of freehold, or long leases, often conditional (e.g. a certain amount of prompt environmental destruction by axe and ungulate might be required). John Batman tried making agreements with the local Aborigines around Melbourne in the 1830s but they were null and void – officially because the basis of the law had already been established (and remained so for about 160 years) and that was that Australia was terra nullius meaning, though ignorant journalists believe it connoted absence of people, “no one’s land”. In other words there was no recognisable land law, not even what the Palestinian jaffa farmers had under the Turks. Their nomafic habits and absence of fences (who needs a fence when you’ve got a spear and boimerang?) just didn’t fit with English law. Well meaning judges, mostly with an Irish Catholic background but persuaded by exceedingly rich Jewish counsel, overturned all that and a lot of good it has done the poor Abos (the minority that are affected since no existing freeholds are touched). It does of course provide activists with a chance to blackmail mining companies and extort a lot of money which is usually used to further the destruction through alcohol, idleness and domestic and child abuse, of northern Australian Aboriginal communities which shouldn’t exist. So harm is done to Aborigines at great cost to the economy and delays in major projects (the latest massive Indian miñing venture is facing activists funded by an American charity.

So much foe enlightwned thinking and humane intentions. My best friend (actually at that precise stage my only friend) on the Court at the time dissented and I would like to think I wouldn’t have found some extremely ingenious way to concur with the majority. Sed quaere.

My hero amongst Australian judiciary once said dneeringly of a case where the Victorian Supreme Court had contrived to find a meaning in a very badly drafted will “and they thought they were doing justice!The real injustice is that the will was made by an 86 year old mam”!

Sorry about typo in my rapidly added anecdote while in editing mode. The great judge himself was 77 at the time, or maybe older in retirement, and himself lived to 86. I don't think there would have been anything foolish or inept about his will if made when he was 86 in those days when that was like being 95 now. But I mention the story as pointing to another area where judges are sometimes persuaded to depart from strict legal method. (I don't remember what was being complained about in the will case: perhaps the court had been too clever by half eg. If the 86 year old had ssai "X shall be divided equally between my four daughters" [but he has only 3 - or maybe has 5] "but "Betsy shall have in addition her grandmother's candelabrum" when Betsy is àctually a niece).

I think I'm with the girls' brother George who was cut out of the will and wants to say it was either invalidated by lack of testamentary capacity or largely invalidated because meaningless.... Justice according to law even if George deserved to be cut out.

ALSO...If you surmise that "justice according to law" is burnt into my still phasic neuronal clusters then you are right. I am not one of the frothing fanatics against the "judicial activists" but I find it easy to hold them in contempt as they presume that their little slice of quotidian fashionable wisdom needs to be promoted by judicial decision when legislation and a fortiori constitutional amendment are too difficult. And yet, and yet. I am pleased as a matter of policy that the activist 1990ish Mason High Court (reminder to those confined in the centre of the world that it is Oz's SCOTUS equivalent) found an implied right to free political speech in our constitution, despite there being no Bill of Rights, and stopped a Labor government supported corfuptly by union money from severely cutting parties access to funding sources. (Maybe it was going to extend to stopping e.g. mining companies protesting special mining taxes - I forget the detail).

Then there was the High Court's abolition of the legal basis on which Australia had been settled by Europeans after 1788 with the Crown, as effectively the chief feudal lord owning all the land and making Crown grants of freehold, or long leases, often conditional (e.g. a certain amount of prompt environmental destruction by axe and ungulate might be required). John Batman tried making agreements with the local Aborigines around Melbourne in the 1830s but they were null and void - officially because the basis of the law had already been established (and remained so for about 160 years) and that was that Australia was terra nullius meaning, though ignorant journalists believe it connoted absence of people, "no one's land". In other words there was no recognisable land law, not even what the Palestinian jaffa farmers had under the Turks. Their nomafic habits and absence of fences (who needs a fence when you've got a spear and boimerang?) just didn't fit with English law. Well meaning judges, mostly with an Irish Catholic background but persuaded by exceedingly rich Jewish counsel, overturned all that and a lot of good it has done the poor Abos (the minority that are affected since no existing freeholds are touched). It does of course provide activists with a chance to blackmail mining companies and extort a lot of money which is usually used to further the destruction through alcohol, idleness and domestic and child abuse, of northern Australian Aboriginal communities which shouldn't exist. So harm is done to Aborigines at great cost to the economy and delays in major projects (the latest massive Indian miñing venture is facing activists funded by an American charity.

So much foe enlightwned thinking and humane intentions. My best friend (actually at that precise stage my only friend) on the Court at the time dissented and I would like to think I wouldn't have found some extremely ingenious way to concur with the majority. Sed quaere.

My hero amongst Australian judiciary once said dneeringly of a case where the Victorian Supreme Court had contrived to find a meaning in a very badly drafted will "and they thought they were doing justice!The real injustice is that the will was made by an 86 year old mam"!

Sorry about typo in my rapidly added anecdote while in editing mode. The great judge himself was 77 at the time, or maybe older in retirement, and himself lived to 86. I don’t think there would have been anything foolish or inept about his will if made when he was 86 in those days when that was like being 95 now. But I mention the story as pointing to another area where judges are sometimes persuaded to depart from strict legal method. (I don’t remember what was being complained about in the will case: perhaps the court had been too clever by half eg. If the 86 year old had ssai “X shall be divided equally between my four daughters” [but he has only 3 - or maybe has 5] “but “Betsy shall have in addition her grandmother’s candelabrum” when Betsy is àctually a niece).

I think I’m with the girls’ brother George who was cut out of the will and wants to say it was either invalidated by lack of testamentary capacity or largely invalidated because meaningless…. Justice according to law even if George deserved to be cut out.

Law serves the interests of the elite. What he's so excited about is the British class system being internalized and tolerated by their lower orders, or part of them anyway. All this talk about 'respecting law' is highfalutin bullshit. Thank god for the Pikeys.

My first Australian ancestor, an irish convict, might as well hsve been a Pikey. He produced a large number of descendants who had every reason to be greatful that contracts and property were relianly protected by law. The view you express is very superficial. Clearly you have never done a ckurse in legal history or studied Roman Law either for comlarative purposes or to explain aspexts carried into the law ofcommon law coubtries. Obviously more powerful people are more likely to have an influence on what the rules of law are than less powerful people but otherwise your implication that the lsw overwhelming serves a small elite to the detriment of most people total canting bullshit and not worthy os someone of your obvious intelligence.

There are, let it be noted, many aspects and divisions of the law. The feudal lord hsd much less need of the protection of the criminal law, apart from his steward cheating him beyond the accepted custom than the mass of commoners. And that is of course still true mutatis mutandis. Contract and property law have secured the rise of the non elites from 1500 to date. Bankruptcy law wasn’t designed to enable wastrel heirs to clear their debts before Daddy or Uncle died and they inherited the grat family estate. Intellectual Property ĺaw had many faults and its outrageous life plus 90 years Copyright in the US is what it is because of Disney – but Disney did not achieve it for some elite class. The particulars matter if you want to get these things right.

BTW Rudi Webster, the Barbadian cricketer/psychiatrist/sports psychologist I referred to above says many wise things in the article A Moral Compass Would Help. He cites experiments e.g. where people with a chance to vheat behaved more morally after being asked to write down the Ten Commandments beforehand – even if they could only remember a couple of them. JD has oversimplified but I think you have almost advocated the kind of nihilism which is probably both rational and natural in Mafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta contested parts of Italy.

but I think you have almost advocated the kind of nihilism which is probably both rational and natural in Mafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta contested parts of Italy.

Not nihilism, but healthy commonsense cynicism, typical for many people, including, incidentally, the elites. The other group is the most square middle-class segment, the 'moral majority'. As the middle-class slowly dissolves, this segment is likely to decline as well, and to become a small 'moral minority'.

The contrast that struck me was one of deep-ingrained attitudes to the law; and the contrast was, to put it very bluntly, between the Anglo-Saxon attitude — “Anglo-Saxon-Celtic,” if you want to be finicky about it — and … other.

This sounds to me like Uncertainty Avoidance, defined as: 'Rule-embracing' --Do people only feel comfortable with clear rules in place?

There's an Uncertainty Avoidance map at Those Who Can See (scroll waaaay down) showing that the Scandinavian and Germanic nations tend to embrace rules somewhat more than Anglosphere ones, who in turn embrace rules more than the rest of Europe, including Celtic Ireland.

http://thosewhocansee.blogspot.ca/p/tables-and-graphs.html

So respect for the law is better described as an Anglo-Germanic thing rather than an Anglo-Saxon-Celtic one.

Derbyman has gratuitously included the Celts in the category of the jurisprudence respecters while deliberately excluding the highly disciplined Germans from the honor. Of course, it could not be his partiality to consanguineal ties, which elevates the Celts to the higher order, for he has also neglected any mention of the Middle Kingdom, his kith and kin from marital woe!

My first Australian ancestor, an irish convict, might as well hsve been a Pikey. He produced a large number of descendants who had every reason to be greatful that contracts and property were relianly protected by law. The view you express is very superficial. Clearly you have never done a ckurse in legal history or studied Roman Law either for comlarative purposes or to explain aspexts carried into the law ofcommon law coubtries. Obviously more powerful people are more likely to have an influence on what the rules of law are than less powerful people but otherwise your implication that the lsw overwhelming serves a small elite to the detriment of most people total canting bullshit and not worthy os someone of your obvious intelligence.

There are, let it be noted, many aspects and divisions of the law. The feudal lord hsd much less need of the protection of the criminal law, apart from his steward cheating him beyond the accepted custom than the mass of commoners. And that is of course still true mutatis mutandis. Contract and property law have secured the rise of the non elites from 1500 to date. Bankruptcy law wasn't designed to enable wastrel heirs to clear their debts before Daddy or Uncle died and they inherited the grat family estate. Intellectual Property ĺaw had many faults and its outrageous life plus 90 years Copyright in the US is what it is because of Disney - but Disney did not achieve it for some elite class. The particulars matter if you want to get these things right.

BTW Rudi Webster, the Barbadian cricketer/psychiatrist/sports psychologist I referred to above says many wise things in the article A Moral Compass Would Help. He cites experiments e.g. where people with a chance to vheat behaved more morally after being asked to write down the Ten Commandments beforehand - even if they could only remember a couple of them. JD has oversimplified but I think you have almost advocated the kind of nihilism which is probably both rational and natural in Mafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta contested parts of Italy.

but I think you have almost advocated the kind of nihilism which is probably both rational and natural in Mafia, Camorra and Ndrangheta contested parts of Italy.

Not nihilism, but healthy commonsense cynicism, typical for many people, including, incidentally, the elites. The other group is the most square middle-class segment, the ‘moral majority’. As the middle-class slowly dissolves, this segment is likely to decline as well, and to become a small ‘moral minority’.

For northern Europeans within their Calvinist and neo-Calvinist traditions, common law is based on the Word of God as expressed in the Bible and the Ten Commandments. If one projects a truly religious society governed by laws, then this follows. The King’s legitimacy and right to rule are likewise grounded on how well he respects these principles.

As a Calvinist society, this was the perception expressed in the Declaration of Independence as the American colonies broke with the British Crown. This is why those testifying in court swear they will tell the truth with a hand on the Bible … so help me God. As such, common law leaves open the possibility of new legal principles based on new “findings” grounded in religion, reason, or tradition. Common law is, therefore, indefinitely defeasible. The result under common law is that judges and juries have the practical right to overrule written law when reacting to a higher sense of justice than that expressed in law.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. — Declaration of Independence

Those suffering under Napoleonic Law have no such traditions. The law is necessary and sufficient unto itself and guilt or innocence is a factual, secular matter assessed by judges, not juries. And, yes, without a sense of objective and universal moral standards that find expression in law, the law is nothing but the expression of power and self-interest on the part of those who happen to be governing at the time.

The secularization and globalization of culture in northern Europe and the United States without question is fracturing the religious and moral foundations of common law. The Cultural Marxists, especially, make raw appeals to power as they thumb their noses at tradition, religion, and common law. Indeed, their revolutionary ideology calls for the violent overturning of tradition, religion, and law by force if necessary as they impose a secular, utopian sense of justice on society.

A brief glance that what is happening at Berkley says it all as masked Marxist “black shirts” run wild and the local police, on orders from their superiors, watch them riot.

“The Englishman walks before the law like a trained horse in the circus. He has the sense of legality in his bones, in his muscles.” – Gorky

So it’s not just us.

Being invariably on the mucky end of the stick, the Scots have a different perspective

“What is Right, and What is Wrang, by the law, by the law?
What is Right and what is Wrang by the law?
What is Right, and what is Wrang?
A weak arm and a strang,
A short sword, and a lang, for to draw, for to draw
A short sword, and a lang, for to draw.” – Robert Burns

The hostility to law which characterized the Obama administration (and specifically the unforgivable Goldershchina) was not just a matter of sentiment. I have tried clumsily formulating, on an unnamed anonymous online Mongolian finger-painting roundtable, that Obama was always “introducing Chinese law,” as was especially visible in immigration and marijuana, but was also policy as widely as it could be spread. The same pattern could be seen:
>Oh no! Look at this modern global problem! So big! So uncontrollable! So outside the grasp of previous efforts!
>Well, I guess the only reasonable solution is to stop trying to enforce these outdated laws.
>But at the same time, y’all folks have gotta unnerstan, it would be too hard to repeal existing law. It will remain on the books and we will reserve the right to enforce it should we see some special case.
Thus Guatemalans let in, Cubans kept out.
A great illustration of the only development in Chinese legal philosophy which need be remembered by the non-specialist is “Inside The Red Mansion:”
>Chinese realize that they want globalization.
>Then they discover they don’t know how.
>New feelings emerge: smugglers teem at every port and they know how to do import-export better than anyone.
>They find a master smuggler and convince him to set up a legitimate modern port operation, verbally promising that he is in an amnesty status.
>He sets up the port.
>New discoveries bubble to the fore of the ever-active Mandarin’s mind: the Chinese have never had any meaningful concept of “no ex post facto.”
>The bureaucrats are shocked, shocked to discover their legalized smuggler’s past.
>He flees to Vancouver.
Future epilogue, not in the book:
>That’s the last place to flee if you want to escape Beijing.
The human norm is that the State is God and can do whatever it wants. The English stumbled across civilization by accident. If we whites could have had a great centralized Qin burying all intellectuals alive, we surely would have. Surely Longshanks and James and Richelieu wanted that. We lucked into superiority through inferiority, we have ethical government only because we were too quarrellous for a real continental empire. And without that, we are an inferior version of Mexico.

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